Newsroom

Bad leaders. Narcissism. Rules for good work relationships. How smiling affects your brain. How face shape apparently can be linked not only to sexual attractiveness, butalsotrustworthiness, as well as the “L” word that professor Ron Riggio is hot on the trail of: Leadership.

In his numerous columns for Psychology Today, Riggio, the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology, has eyed leadership from a number of different anglesfinding the not-so-obvious, and even the amusing, in his discoveries. Such as how to deal with people suffering from the annoying “ICNBW” syndrome otherwise known as “I Can Never Be Wrong.” That was the subject of a June 14 post by Riggioone of multiple columns the CMC professor has busily penned for Psychology Today in June.

“I research, teach, and read about leadership, so it is easy to see applications of both good and bad leadership principles in everyday life,” he says.

The day before that piece aired, Riggio built a column around “responsible leadership,” an idea, he says, that was inspired by CMC’s educational mission.

Effective leaders, he notes in the June 14 blog, are not necessarily good leaders. Good leaders “do the right things versus simply getting things done.” They treat people fairly, limit collateral damage, develop followers (who then become better themselves), and leave the team and organization better off than they found it.

A few weeks before that, Riggio, the former director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College, directed readers of his Psychology Today blog to an annual list of “40 Best Companies for Leaders.” The list, compiled by Chief Executive magazine, ranks companies based on the investment they make in developing their leaders.

“Perhaps the most dramatic finding,” he noted, “is that companies that invest in leadership development generate dramatically greater market value over time than companies with weak leader development programs.”

That column, Does Your Company Invest in You? can be read in full, online, along with links to his evolving and enlightening perspectives on leadership, including advice to manage time and tasks, reasons why leaders (and lovers) fail, and yeseven the column about how face shape communicates more about someone than you might have imagined.